Web traffic to major newspapers’ blog sites grew 210 percent year-over-year in December, according to a report from Nielsen/NetRatings. Part of the reason for that tremendous rise in newspaper blog traffic is due to some papers adding new blogs in 2006 that therefore didn’t exist the year before, a Nielsen/NetRatings spokeswoman said. Still, it’s clear that blogs are in demand at major newspapers. The report’s specific findings:
—Unique visitors to blog sites affiliated with the top 10 U.S. online newspapers rose to 3.8 million in December 2006 from 1.2 million viewers a year earlier.
—Blog pages accounted for 13 percent of overall visits to newspaper sites in December 2006, up from 4 percent a year earlier.
—60 percent of online newspaper readers were men, with the percentage rising to 66 percent of blog readers.
NYTimes.com was the top U.S. newspaper website with 13.2 million unique viewers, Nielsen/NetRatings data said. Next was Gannett’s USAToday.com, with 9.1 million viewers, followed by the Washingtonpost.com, with 7.6 million viewers.  Release